Multislider Bug (?)

I’ve been fiddling with a dozen [multisliders] inside a medium size patch. I am resizing these [multisliders] in real-time, and sometimes give them fairly big numbers (like 3,000 sliders pero object). The problem is that Max will repeatedly crash upon some random resizing.

I realize that perhaps [multislider] is not the best object to be playing with in terms of a hundred variables, but is this normal? If it is, can someone suggest a better UI alternative? I don’t want [matrixtctrl} because it relies on rasterized graphics so when I resize the object the patch will slow down notoriously. Thanks.

I just found there is a limit to a patching windows working size. Please see below the example, where [multislider] is cut above the 60,000px width point (actually it is cut at around 45,000px). Is there a way to circumvent this? And I know, whatever I’m trying to do, this is probably not the most elegant solution…

Yes, the patch is supposed to show how the multislider is chopped at its right end because it is longer than the (I suppose) patcher window’s display capability. If you scroll to the extreme right you will see this clearly. I kind of switched my approach, but since the question is still floating I decided to reply to your message, out of curiosity and for posterity.

So, is this a bug, or expected behavior? Can you change the patcher window’s total working area?

Hehehe, I didn’t know about that LITTLE detail. I still don’t understand the technicality behind this, namely, is it my screen, Max, or both? What is the difference between vertical scrolling a la Tumblr and horizontal scrolling like in this patch? Is it that tumblr uses a scripted buffer of some sorts?

The limitation is, at least partly, historic. In the QuickDraw drawing environment on Classic Mac OS, window coordinates were signed shorts (16-bit) integers, usually positive. So that put a hard limit of 32,767 pixels on anything you wanted to draw.

QuickDraw has long since been superseded, several times for that matter. But many objects may still make low-level assumptions about size limits, etc., that date from QD days. If you’re doing crazy things with drawing, then you ought to make yourself aware of these limitations. They’ll come and bite you otherwise.